Olam launches four initiatives to mark 25th anniversary
Olam International has launched four global initiatives to address some of the challenges facing the next generation, as part of activities marking its 25th anniversary.
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With an initial fund of US$3 million, the company, which is a leading global agribusiness organisation with operations in cocoa, cashew, rice and wheat across Ghana, will focus on four schemes including the Olam Prize for Innovation in Food Security and the Olam Scholarship Programme. The others are the Olam Foundation and the Building Sustainable Futures Forum.
Launched in partnership with international scientific organisation, Agropolis Foundation, the Olam Prize for Innovation in Food Security will recognise an outstanding scientific innovation for its potential impact on the availability, affordability, accessibility or adequacy of food, as well as support research to further its development.
The winner of this prize will receive US$50,000. Entries closed on December 4, 2014 and the winner will be announced in March 2015 at the third Global Science Conference on Climate Smart Agriculture.
The Olam Scholarship Programme is aimed at fostering leadership and governance in the emerging markets by supporting aspiring and capable students to pursue higher education abroad.
Through the scholarships and the mentoring of awardees, Olam hopes to help create a generation of change catalysts who will contribute towards economic transformation, promote good governance, and help develop emerging economies.
This programme will award up to 10 scholarships each year to postgraduate students wishing to pursue further studies in development economics, business management, and public policy and administration, and who are passionate about working in emerging markets.
The third initiative is the Olam Foundation under which for the company to support development issues beyond the day-to-day commercial framework of its business. Olam also intends to make annual contributions to the fund to scale the scope of the Foundation’s activities.
Olam’s final global initiative, Building Sustainable Futures Forum, will be a platform where the rising resource constraints threatening continued global development can be debated and solved in a holistic way. The Forum, to be held in the second half of 2015, will bring together leaders from different industries across the private sector, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), governments and academia to focus on key development issues, including food security, water security, energy security, climate change, sustainable growth and inclusive growth.
Olam International explains that the objective for the forum is to break down silos and find sustainable solutions to these interlinked yet complex and intractable issues. Through starting the debate, the company says it hopes to develop a practical, action-oriented approach, with inter-disciplinary collaboration and a focus on private sector-led programmes, in order to find solutions to these key global development challenges.
Mr. Amit Agrawal, Olam Ghana Country Head, said the initiatives were designed in response to problems such as food, water and energy insecurity, the impact of climate change, sustainable and inclusive growth, and good governance, particularly in the emerging markets.
“As we celebrate Olam’s 25th year and its journey from a single-product, single-country company to a global agri-business, we reflect on our vision of transcending boundaries – the meaning of Olam – and consider how we will continue to evolve over the next 25 years”, said Mr. Agrawal.
“Our teams on the ground work hard to help improve the livelihoods of over 50,000 cocoa and cashew farmers within our Ghana network, while our investments in local wheat processing and the import of food staples help to invigorate local food markets. Through these global initiatives we hope our contribution to Ghana will be strengthened even further,” he added.
Olam Ghana opened its first office in Accra in 1994 and is now present in nine locations across Ghana.